Quick and easy and tastes good, can’t ask for more than that
This is again something that I have cooked from time to time over the years. The urge to bake banana bread is usually brought on by having over-ripe bananas in the house. This time the cause of the over-ripe bananas was my gardening hat which I had put on the fruit basket for want of somewhere else to put it and then didn’t go into the garden for a few days so the bananas were delightfully mushy and ready to be used.
This recipe makes two loaf pans, my pans are fairly long spring form so the loaf isn’t all that tall but that’s fine with me as the slices are snack size. The size of a slice of banana bread bought from a coffee shop says a lot for our over eating due to portion size. If I am going to go to the effort of baking it doesn’t take much more effort to make enough to freeze. The recipe can easily be halved, I just happened to have 5 bananas.
Ingredients
- 1 cup plain flour
- 2 cups SR flour
- 2 cups brown sugar
- 2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 250 g butter – melted
- 4 eggs (or 3 if very large)
- 5 very ripe bananas
- 3/4 cup chopped dates
Method
1. Pre heat oven to 180ºC and prepare 2 loaf pans, for my spring form pans I line the base with baking paper and close the spring form sides over the paper then butter the sides.
Method without mixer
- Mix together the dry ingredients, a seive may be needed to break up the brown sugar lumps.
- Melt the butter and whisk in the eggs.
- Mush the bananas and stir through the dates and add to the egg mixture. Stir the wet mix into the dry mix and stir until just mixed. Pour into the pans and bake for 40 minutes, turning a few times. Test and if necessary cook for a few more minutes.
Method with mixer
- Chop the dates and peel the bananas.
- Put the melted butter into the mixer, and whisk in the cinnamon and eggs.
- Slow down the mixer and add the brown sugar then bananas (just in chunks – they break up in the mixer).
- Add the flours and dates and continue to mix slowly until just combined.
2. Remove form oven and leave to cool in the pan for at least 5 minutes before turning out.
3. Slice, serve buttered.
4. Freezes well.